Welcome to the Carve Classroom

Are you a writer? You've come to the right place. Online workshops, critique services, and "tips for writers" blog posts can help you improve your knowledge and understanding of writing and publishing.

Are you a teacher or educator? Bring contemporary literature into your classroom with our educational discounts on Carve back issues or with our free comprehensive lesson plans for select Carve short stories.

Online workshops

Learn the basics of craft in a virtual community.

Featuring self-study or mentorship tracks, our workshops help you learn the elements of craft and let you share your work in a unique community platform.

contemporary literature for your classroom

With a vast collection of back issues and online short stories, Carve is a great tool for introducing your students to quality literature and contemporary authors.

Educators can order any of our back issues in bulk (min. 25) to introduce your English and Creative Writing students to a living, breathing literary magazine that features HONEST FICTION, interviews with writers, new poetry, nonfiction, illustrations, and more.

Separately, we also offer 9 free comprehensive lesson plans, each centered around a Carve short story. All include audio recordings of the story, interactive activities and discussion prompts, and critical reading and writing exercises.

Carve Online Workshops

Learn and practice the elements of crafting a short story in our community-oriented online fiction workshop.

We currently offer two six-week courses that focus on a different element of the craft each week.

All reading assignments come from Carve online archives to ground your studies in contemporary, published content.

Each weekly lesson will take approximately 2-3 hours to complete and includes:

Explanation of craft element with examples

1-3stories for reading assignments

6-8 reader response questions

1-2 writing exercises.

Choose from two study tracks:

Self-study: Receive the new lesson each week with your assignments for you to complete on your own schedule.

Guided Feedback: You'll receive the new lesson each week and also be assigned a mentor and a weekly deadline to submit your reading responses and writing exercises. Your mentor will review and provide written feedback.

Guided Feedback does not include submitting your own stories and receiving feedback. (We do plan to offer that in new courses in the future.)

We use the Wet Ink platform to deliver lesson content so that you can:

Log in and complete lessons anywhere with an internet connection

Submit all your responses in one place with no need to save or email files.

Keep all of your content at the conclusion of the class.

Wet Ink is also a fantastic community platform. No matter which study track you choose, you can interact with other students in online forums to discuss course content, Carve stories, writing, publishing, or any other topic you'd like to start. You can also share your work and request peer critiques.

Carve Critiques

We offer affordable critiques for prose and poetry, focusing on structure, character, and elements of craft, all in an effort to make your work more attractive to publishers.

Thanks for the critique of my story. It was shortlisted for the Willesden Herald Short Story Competition and will be published in their anthology. The critique you gave me was extremely helpful in my revisions and the story wouldn’t have come this far without your advice.

A developmental critique plus line edits and notes throughout the manuscript to highlight elements of the writing that are strong or need improvement. Corrections to grammar and punctuation may be made but are not the primary focus.

POETRY CRITIQUES

Comprehensive Option

Receive up to 1 page (single-spaced) of feedback on entire manuscript focusing on poetic elements such as stanza and line-break structures, imagery and sound, and themes and style. Also includes line edits and notes throughout the manuscript to highlight elements of the writing that are strong or need improvement.

Poetry critiques are conducted by a rotating staff of Carve editors. Fees and other guidelines are accessible on our Submittable page for critiques.

Don’t be the person who reads it on their phone. Too many things can go wrong, and it’s distracting to watch someone repeatedly unlock the screen when it goes dark or constantly zoom in when they can’t see the tiny print.

A lot of the work of revision comes in the process of evaluating the rhythm of the sentences themselves, but if you’re reading the words out loud as you compose them, you’ll hear the false notes right away.

Educational Discounts for Teachers & Educators

I used the Fall 2013 issue with my A.P. Literature class. It went really well. Students grasped the stories’ complexity and gained a greater understanding of point of view, which I’d been focusing on the entire year.

— Christine H.

Diverse Voices & Unique Features

Help your students discover the magic of literary magazines by including a back issue of Carve as part of their required reading. With roughly a dozen stories, poems, nonfiction essays, and interviews in each issue, Carve is a bite-size lit mag just right for classrooms, helping students consume a wide variety of voices in a short amount of time.

Our unique features, such as Decline/Accept, Story Statshot, and What We Talk About interviews with authors, will help give students a broader perspective of literature by exposing them to the challenges of writing, editing, and submitting as a writer today.

DISCOUNTS & Ordering

Though many issues sell out to the general public, we're able to conduct small reprint runs of single issues for educators for a generous discount (minimum 25 copies). Keep the content fresh by returning to order more recent issues year after year.

Teachers may request a free digital PDF copy of any back issue. Our editors can also offer recommendations on which issues are appropriate for your classroom audience. Every bulk order comes with a free one-year subscription.

» Contact us to get a quote, free sample, or a recommendation.

Lesson Plans for Teachers & Educators

The short stories are amazing — the lessons are very rigorous, which is fantastic.

— Elizabeth H.

My students and were excited to be working with contemporary writers who are “living” and accessible! We found that connecting online with other readers and the author directly — via posts, emails and Skype — was exciting and fun!

— Holly S.

HONEST FICTION for your classroom

We have 9 lesson plans, each centering around a different short story published in Carve. Each short story is available to read online and includes an embedded audio version that can be streamed in the classroom or at home. All lesson plans are free for teachers and educators to download and include the following components:

Pre-Reading Context

Detailed "About the Author"

Introduction and Story Synopsis

Interactive Opening Activity

Post-Reading Exercises

Story Discussion Questions

Craft Discussion Questions

Expository & Creative Writing Prompts

Beyond the Story

Literary Connections with Other Works

Ways to "Connect with the Author" via email and Skype.

Lesson plans are grouped into three recommended audiences based on content, language, and maturity of themes in the stories. Choose from Microsoft Word or Powerpoint formats, both of which are editable to suit your specific classroom and needs.